


Midnight Thrall

by HappyLeech



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Gen, Human Eiffel, I could have sworn that Anne was only ever refered to as Anne Garcia, I should know better than to assume anything is going to stay a oneshot around here, Magic AU but not my main Magic AU, Siren Kate and Anne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-17 23:22:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21551452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HappyLeech/pseuds/HappyLeech
Summary: Doug wakes up in the middle of the night in a Walmart parking lot. That wouldnt be anything new, but he hadn't been drinking  and Anne's in the backseat.A Magic AU
Relationships: Anne Eiffel & Doug Eiffel, Anne Eiffel & Kate Garcia, Doug Eiffel & Kate Garcia
Comments: 11
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

Doug wakes up in a Walmart parking lot. 

This isn't an issue- he's woken up in weirder and worse places before. What  _ is _ an issue is that he isn't alone in his shitty car in a Walmart parking lot at 2:36 am. Anne is in the backseat, snoring away.

Anne, who he isn't supposed to have unsupervised contact with because Kate has custody and he has negative custody.

He scrambles for his phone and hopes that she won't call the cops immediately because  _ he doesn't remember snatching Anne. _

"It's two am, Doug," she snaps when she answers. "Give me one good reason not to hang up on you."

"I have Anne," he blurts out, then winces. "Not, like, not that I'm holding her hostage or anything, I’m at a Walmart, but I don't remember getting her or getting in my car or  _ anything _ between going to bed and five minutes ago."

“Have you been--”

“No!” Doug snaps his mouth shut. Anne was still sleeping. “No, I haven’t been drinking. I literally came home from work, showered, ate, went to bed. I don’t remember...this.”

For a second Kate's quiet, before she sighs. “Is it the Walmart across from the tech school?”

Doug looks out the window. “Yeah, I think so. Beside that place with the taco restaurant.”

"I'll be right there. Don't go anywhere."

* * *

It takes Kate about thirty minutes to get to the Walmart, and Doug spends all of them with his keys in his glovebox, sitting on his hands, scared out of his mind. If Kate wants, if she reports him, she could put him in jail for a while. He doesn’t think that ‘ _I don’t remember doing it’_ is a good excuse when it comes to an attempted kidnapping. At least Doug’d be able to point out that he stopped part way and called Kate…

He jumps when she knocks on his window, and he climbs out of the car, relieved. “I am so happy to see you." Kate was looking at him, and if it wasn't three in the morning, he'd say she was relieved, and not just because of Anne.

"I'm...sorry," she says, and Doug frowns.

"Why? I'm pretty sure I'm the one with something to be sorry about," he says, motioning to the car. "Here, I'll give you the carseat too, just so that, whatever it was, doesn't happen again."

"It was Anne, Doug." He turns to look at her, his hand on the door. "Her Song is getting more powerful, obviously. She must have Thralled you."

DDoug walks back around the car to face Kate. "What are you talking about?" 

"Magic is real."

_ And the judge thought she was the better person to take care of Anne _ , Doug's brain say unkindly, and he ignores it. "Magic is real. Kate, I-- look. Once you have Anne in your car, call the cops. I can give you my keys, if you want to make sure I don't try to get out of here. Or, hell, I'll call them myself. You don't need to...whatever this is."

She sighs. "I'm not going to call the cops, Doug," she says gently. "I'm not pressing charges either- this wasn't your fault."

"Kate--"

"It isn't your fault," she repeats. "So shut up and listen. Magic is real and Anne used hers to make you come and get her. You're lucky it failed now, instead of when you were actually driving."

“Magic,” he repeats, and Kate nods. “Listen, if this is just some… some way to get back at me for some of the shit I said when I was drunk--"

Kate rolls her eyes and snaps her fingers. A ball of greenish-blue fire springs to life, floating above her hand, and Doug snaps his mouth shut. She waves her hand, and the ball disappeared.

"Okay," Doug croaks after a second. "So. Magic."

"Do you know what a Siren is?" Kate asks.

"Evil mermaids?" 

Kate sighed. "I hate movies," she grumbles. "No, we're- we aren't quite 'evil mermaids', Doug. Everything has to eat."

"You're a fish?" 

"I'm not a-! Doug," Kate shakes her head, but she has a smile on her face, so Doug counts that as a win. "Anne too. She… I knew that this-" she motions to the two of them. "-would upset her, but I didn't think she'd Thrall you."

"Thrall? Isn't that a like, vampire thing? Oh god, are vampires real too?" Kate laughs and Doug pouts. How many monsters and fairytales are real? He _has_ to know.

"Maybe not the best conversation to have in a parking lot," she admits. "but a lot of Inhumans can thrall. She basically- she must have called you and Sung to you. I guess you could say she mind controlled you into getting her and starting to drive."

Doug thinks back to what Kate said about Anne's song fading. "This...could have ended worse, couldn't it."

She nods. "You could have crashed, hit a tree, a person, another car."

"Jesus…"

"Come on, Doug," Kate says after a minute. "You can stay at the house tonight- last thing either of us need is this happening twice in one night. You can take my car, I'll take yours."

"Oh. Are you sure? I mean, I think that goes against a few court orders," he asks, even as he opens the door to snag his keys from the glovebox. "There's still that shitty motel, right? I can get a room."

"Did you grab your wallet when Anne got you?"

"...dibs on the couch."

* * *

Communications Officer Douglas Eiffel still goes to space, still contracts Decima, still encounters the Dear Listeners, Hera, Minkowski, Hilbert, Lovelace, and the SI-5. 

But this time he's prepared, and banshees, dragons, selkies, vampires, magic users, and Hunters aren't so foreign.


	2. Chapter 2

"Space? You?" Kate says on the other end of the video call, and Doug beams.

“Yeah! They need a comms officer to go up for two and a half years.”

“You’re gonna leave?” Anne popped into view, and he held up his hands. “You can’t!”

“Not yet, fishface,” he replied. “In a couple of months. And I won’t be gone too long, and imagine the stories I’ll be able to tell you! Imagine the stories I’ll tell the aliens about you.” he winked, and Anne giggled. 

Between Kate and Doug, they’d decided not to fuck around with the court orders put in place, and instead made use of video and voice chatting to let Anne and Doug speak and see each other, without risking her thralling him into joining them. Especially since they didn’t even live in the same states any more. 

Anne ran off to work on her homework and Kate leaned in, popping headphones in so she couldn’t hear the entire conversation. “Okay, what did you do.”

“It’s legit- I already emailed you the contract, because I knew that you’d be fussy.” Doug rolled his eyes. “I’m an adult and I don’t need your permission to get a different job.”

“I know, I’m not trying to--” she groaned. “I know you, Doug.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m gullible, I know. But it’s a legit company- Goddard Futuristics.”

“Oh! I’ve heard of them.”

“Everyone’s heard of them, Kate. They’re one of the few people doing anything with space. Mr. Cutter said-” Doug paused when Kate sat up straight, brow furrowing. “Uh…”

“Why do I know that name?”

“Uh, because he’s like the head?” Doug could hear Kate typing on the other end of the call. “Oh no, don’t tell me. Is he evil?”

“I...don’t think so? I feel like I’ve heard that name before,” Kate said. “Marcus Cutter...it sounds familiar, in a fish way. Did you feel compelled to sign the contract at all? Lose any time?”

“Not as far as I noticed. He’s a little creepy, but it’s not like I’m going to be working with him. Commanding Officer is named, uh, Renée Minkowski, a doctor named Alexander Hilbert, and a mother program on the station named Hera? AI, I guess.” He paused. “Any of those names twigging your sonar?”

“I regret telling you that I’m a siren.”

* * *

Kate slams the door in the face of the  _ fucking siren _ running Goddard Futuristics, the one who sent her- they were bad as partners, but they were still  _ friends- _ friend to space, only for him to die. 

An explosion. An explosion, and she's going to tell Anne  _ now, _ but they'll both be seeing it on the news for weeks. Or not at all. It depends on the kind of ship Marcus  _ fucking _ Cutter runs, how many friends in low places he has to scrub his company clean.

"Mom?" Anne asks, and Kate realizes that she's standing in the entryway, biting down on her lower lip to keep from screaming. "What's wrong?"

"Sweetheart...something happened to your dad." Anne shakes her head and steps back. Kate doesn't blame her. "The ship, there was an issue, it malfunctioned and b--" she shouldn't say it blew up. "It was destroyed."

Anne starts to wail, and Kate finds she's not far behind. 

"Come on, baby girl," she says after a minute, tears obscuring her vision. "Outside, the pond. We should Sing."

She's always hoped that she'll never have to teach Anne the Mourning Song, but it's time. And she hates it, curling up in the bottom of the pond with Anne after, cursing Marcus Cutter and Goddard Futuristics and Douglas fucking Eiffel the whole time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess this isn't a oneshot anymore oops


	3. Chapter 3

Kate debates leaving Anne with her parents when she gets the news that no, Doug is still alive, but decides against it. It's been four years, Anne needs this.

She barely recognizes him when they're shown to the room the Hephaestus crew are in. Hes thin and sick looking and he's--

"Doug! What the fuck?" She snaps, glaring at the others around her- Selkie and Vampire and Banshee- and pushes into the crowd to take his face. Anne latches onto his middle. She's ten, and missed him horribly.

Doug carefully puts one hand on Anne's shoulder. "Hey Kate. Who needs eyes anyways?" His eyes are milky white and despite his lack of sight, still dart around like he's trying to keep track of the room.

"What happened?!" Anne asks, about to cry.

"A seer who didn't want to be tried to...switch their eyes," the selkie answers. "It...worked, somewhat."

Kate doesn't know, but it drove Pryce insane almost instantly, vision after vision hitting her until she was driven to her knees and Cutter put her out of her misery.

"He's the- he's the only one without any magic or inhuman heritage," Kate snaps, ignoring the demon holding the selkie's hand. "You couldn't at least  _ try _ to keep him safe?"

"Kate," Doug says, and she hugs him as tight as Anne and starts to cry. "Kate, it's...not okay, but you can't blame the commander. You really can't blame anyone here for what happened."

"I can do my best," she says. "You goddamned fucking idiot, moron, absolute imbecilic-" 

* * *

After what feels like hours, Kate steps back and Doug grunts as he picks up Anne.

"Hey there, crabcake," he says, and she starts to cry again. 

"Don't do that again!" Anne cries into his shoulder, and Kate turns a glare on the rest of the people in the room

"Who the fuck are- well, I know you-" she motions to Daniel. "But I want names and explanations."

"You know...Daniel?" The vampire asks, and Kate rolls her eyes. 

"Him and Doug are Facebook friends, and I'm the only other person he interacts with on there."

(That had been a fun conversation. Kate had called, asked how the hell he managed to become Facebook friends with a Hunter, and he had no idea what she meant. 

"Lots of people hunt, Kate."

"That's not what I mean, dipshit.")

The others were staring, and she huffs. "Look, we might have made terrible partners but he's still Anne's dad and my best friend, somehow."

"Thanks Kate," Doug replies, muffled by Anne's body. 

"He- what?" The selkie looks at Doug. "You couldn't have tried to stop him from trying to kill us before?"

"He said the Hobbit movies were better than the books," Daniel says dryly. "I was legally obligated to try and kill him."

"Actors. Hot."

Kate snaps her fingers, drawing the attention back to her. "Names please."

* * *

"You're a mess," Kate says to Doug later, and he groans. "A big, dumb, bisexual mess. I can't believe you went to  _ space _ , only to hook up with your facebook crush there."

"He's hot," he mutters and she nods. 

"Oh, trust me, I know. He also tried to kill you?"

"Undercoverrrrrrrr," he whines, drawing out the word. "Why are you so mean to me."

"Because you're an asshole dipshit who was presumed dead for four years and you made me and Anne cry." Anne was asleep between the two of them, holding tightly to Doug's arm. "You...broke my heart, Doug. Again."

"I know," he replies quietly. "I know."

“Please don’t do it again. Don’t break Anne’s heart again. I don’t know if either of us could take it.”

* * *

The three of them fall asleep, curled up in a shitty bed that barely fits one. Later there will be discussions to have and movies to watch and listen to and an awakening world to navigate, but for now…

Rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And finished! You would think I'd work on my nearly done next chapter for trustfall but no. almost 4 months and you get this :p

**Author's Note:**

> First off I finished this at work and am posting on my phone and it wont let me add the tags I want to add goddamnit (I thought Anne had Kate's last name????)
> 
> Second is that this isnt even my main Magic au???? This is from a doc called 'Magic but wrong au' bc Doug's a siren in my main AU (like Boxontheniles!) And somehow I finished this b4 I finished anything with my main thing. Not to mention this is a "good" version bc the car crash with Anne didn't happen
> 
> Third: Dominik Koudelka/Daniel Jacobi is. A good ship.


End file.
